It worked out well that I didn’t have time to finish off my Blitzcrank wrapup last night. I hadn’t yet seen the Champion Spotlight Riot put out sometime yesterday, which was for everyone’s favorite steam golem. I wrote the majority of this prior to seeing Phreak’s spotlight, but I’ll add in a couple notes where I think it’s appropriate.
After spending more than a week with Blitzcrank, I was happy to find that the steam golem still has some life in him. In my earlier posts I was frustrated by the tankiness of a lot of my enemies. Later in the week, though, I got set up against some more average comps, which made Blitz feel a lot more fun.
Part of my early issues with Blitzcrank were my build, too. I was messing around with Manamune too much, and he just doesn’t need it. While it’s definitely cool to see more than half of Blitz’s health bar turn to shield when Mana Shield procs, it seems like a waste to build around a skill that only activates when you’re close to death. Honestly, a Sheen rush is plenty to give Blitz that little extra durability when he needs it and provide some much-needed extra damage. If you level his Power Fist first, you should have plenty of opportunities to make use of Sheen’s extra damage.
I want to make sure to point out that Blitzcrank deals excellent damage, thanks to the short cooldown on Power Fist and the fact that it deals double damage. Blitzcrank can crit incredibly hard while still remaining fairly tanky thanks to Mana Shield. That said, he requires farm like any champion, and he can have a pretty rough time farming in lane.
I’m finally back in North Carolina and, armed with a freshly cleaned apartment and a beautiful laptop HP was kind enough to lend me while I was in Ohio, I’m ready to dive back into the happy little world of Valoran. Unfortunately I didn’t have nearly enough time to spend with Blitzcrank this past week, so I’ll be extending his Champ of the Week feature so that the robot gets what he’s due.
In other news, I just attempted to log in, hoping to snag a quick Skarner game before succumbing to the inevitable result of an 11-hour car ride, but alas, a twenty minute queue timer is standing in the way. I think I’m going to let it win, too.
So how has Skarner been? The spotlight looked like a much more accurate representation of a given champion’s skills and abilities. Phreak actually died! OMGOMGOMG! Seriously, though, I don’t consider it a good thing that Skarner is relegated to jungle duty. It seems to me there are much more reliable junglers in the game and Wriggle’s feels like a total waste. Unfortunately, he has no dash, which means he’ll also get outperformed pretty badly in lane without a decent bit of burst damage. This is all conjecture, of course. If you’re finding that his heal allows for excellent lane sustain, let me know in the comments.
Also, how’s the Pantheon buff? I miss the days when I played him, which were basically just after he released. I haven’t messed with him much since.
With that, I’m going to call it a night. Look for me later in the week – I should be around quite a bit.
I’ve been spending my time this week with Blitzcrank, a champion I cut my teeth on way back in the day. Blitz was always appealing because of the huge dopamine hit I get whenever I land a hook. It just…feels…so…good. More than that, a good Blitzcrank grab can determine the outcome of a fight, or at least I used to feel like it could. While I’m still having fun with Blitz, I can’t help but feel like he’s a little outclassed by the new crop of Tanky DPS champions.
It used to be that a hook under the tower was a kill on most of the damage dealing characters in the game, unless they could pull off a nice Flash. Thanks to new tower-tanking mechanics and tankier champions, I feel much less confident in my ability to land a kill under the turret on anything but the squishiest of champions. Against the squishy champs, Blitz still feels amazing though. There really is nothing quite like landing a grab in the early game for first blood.
With the increased survivability of several of Blitzcrank’s opponents, it’s really important to have a strong lane mate. In most cases, any stunner will do, but having a character with heavy harass by your side means you become a much greater threat to your opponent. When I hook full-health Jarvan, for instance, he stabs me and smacks me twice and I’m at half hp. When I hook a half-hp Jarvan, though, he immediately thinks about running away. If you’re interested in playing Blitzcrank, make sure you bring a friend with some solid harass.
I’ve also had some trouble convincing my teammates to gank at level one, and I can’t figure out why. When I see a Blitzcrank on the enemy team, I usually run for cover at level. I’ll hang around turrets, hoping my team has a CV and knows how to use it. For whatever reason, though, my teammates have been fleeing the scene when I try to gank in the early game, which is where Blitz really tends to shine. I woul encourage any budding Blitzcrank player to play extra nice in the early game so that your teammates are more likely to lend a hand. It’s tough getting solo kills early in the game, but not so bad if you have a team surrounding you.
Check back this weekend for the Blitzcrank wrapup. I think I have some decent ideas for giving Blitzcrank a little boost without turrning him into the OP champ of the month.
It’s time to burn one of my favorite champions for the Champ of the Week. I’ve had a good time playing some champions that aren’t in my regular rotation over the past couple months, but I would love to get back to someone that’s right in my wheelhouse. This week’s Champ of the Week is none other than Blitzcrank, the Steam Golem.
I’ve written before about just how much fun I have when playing Blitzcrank, and little has changed about that. He’s one of the most stalwart champions in the League, catching the occasional mini-buff but rarely seen as needing a nerf. He’s also one of the most unique champions out there, providing a benefit to the team unlike any other champion.
I’m going to focus on a few things over the course of the week. First, I need to get back to farming well with Blitz. The last few games I’ve played with him my farm has been atrocious. I used to be excellent at farming with him, too. Secondly, his build. I’ve always been a Sheen believer, but I haven’t played much Blitzcrank since the introduction of Manamune (a shame, I know). I want to spend some time focusing on maximizing Blitzcrank’s early kill potential and hopefully increasing my early game farm.
Check back later in the week to see how Blitzcrank stacks up against the game’s best lane champions. Also, feel free to drop any questions or advice you may have in the comments. May the hooking begin!
I decided to post the video trailer for Demonblade Tryndamere here just in case any of you were looking to purchase him/the skin and wanted some context around the purchase. My week with Tryndamere was cut a bit short due to my traveling, but I still feel like I’ve had enough time with him to analyze his playstyle since his remake and the things he’s now up against. This is going to be kind of dense because Tryndamere is built around some complicated mechanics. Bear with me.
I just got out of a game with a Tryndamere on my team who started the game 0-7. To be fair, he was not a great player, but I think Tryndamere’s freshly weakened early game had to be a partially contributing factor. Though I did jungle with Tryndamere a decent bit over the past week, I’m not going to cover that much here. Trynd is a seriously weak jungler – any jungler worth his salt knows that Tryndamere relies on losing health to make it through the jungle. He’s easily ganked, easily countered, easily shut down. It’s not a good thing.
Let’s talk laning. Old Tryndamere was decent in lane for a couple reasons. First, if you got him below 50 percent HP and were standing next to him, he was going to crit your face off. His crit chance would skyrocket, which then added both damage and crit damage to each successive swing. Except when it didn’t. There were times when I was ready to scream at my computer because of missed crits or enemy Tryndamere players who landed several in a row at level 1. It was inconsistent, and while I understand the desire to level this out, I don’t think the remake really accomplished it. He hits less hard, which is fine when playing against him, but it has completely de-incentivized him to get into a fight during the early game. He doesn’t get the combat benefits fast enough any more, which is a big problem, and it extends to the late game.
Old Tryndamere used to be able to get his most useful stats when he was at full HP: crit damage and additional damage. Though new Tryndamere has passive additional damage as part of Bloodlust, and a decent bit of it, he doesn’t get any additional damage until he starts to lose health. Instead, he gets crit chance, which is a pretty crappy stat. It doesn’t scale well, can be totally eclipsed late game by armor penetration and flat damage, and Tryndamere gets enough in an average build that the 35 percent from his Fury generation isn’t really all that helpful late in the game.
Early, though, he’s totally reliant on that 35 percent crit if he’s forced to fight, but he’s much better off not engaging. Tryndamere has no decent lane harass if he can’t stay on top of creeps and stack up Fury, and he’ll take somewhere between 15 and 20 attacks to get full Fury in the early game. It’s ridiculously easy to counter for most solo champions. The nerf to the Spinning Slash cooldown also reduced his ability to get into and out of those early fights. Without a strong farm, Tryndamere is severely gimped, unable to contribute meaningfully in a fight.
His one saving grace right now is his ultimate, which can allow him to creep back up the power scale, if only because he can stay involved in a fight long enough to hopefully last hit or grab a few assists. When he’s ahead, his ult feels like a decent way to prolong a fight, but with the nerf to the Bloodlust heal, it almost always feels like he’s just delaying the inevitable.
That does it for last week’s champ of the week. I’ll have this week’s posted later today. Remember, no FG LoL Mondays tonight but, by all means, feel free to invite me for a game if you see me online this week.
